Longer stays leave record number of immigrant children in...

1of10U.S. Border Patrol agents take Central American asylum seekers into custody on June 12 near McAllen. The number of unaccompanied children in migrant shelters reached a record of more than 14,000 in November, including more than 5,600 in Texas. More children are not coming here, but they are being detained for much longer before being released to adult sponsors, usually family.Photo: John Moore / Getty Images

2of10Immigrant children read and play at a Catholic Charities shelter after being released from U.S. government detention on Nov. 3 in McAllen. The number of mostly Central American children coming here alone has largely stayed steady, about 5,000 in October. The number of families coming here together however has skyrocketed to a record 23,121 last month.
Photo: John Moore, Getty Images

3of10A Mission Police Dept. officer, left, and a U.S. Border Patrol agent watch over a group of Central American asylum seekers before taking them into custody on June 12 near McAllen. The immigrant families were then sent to a federal processing center for possible separation under the president's now-rescinded "zero tolerance" policy.Photo: John Moore, Staff / Getty Images

4of10 Immigrant children play at a temporary migrant shelter set up near the U.S.-Mexico border on Nov. 18 in Tijuana, Mexico. Parts of the migrant caravan have been arriving to Tijuana after traveling more than a month through Central America and Mexico to reach the U.S. border. Photo: John Moore, Getty Images

5of10 Immigrants wait to eat at a temporary migrant shelter set up near the U.S.-Mexico border on Nov. 18 in Tijuana, Mexico. In response to the caravan, Trump sent 5,800 active-duty military troops to the border to assist Border Patrol agents. Photo: John Moore, Getty Images

6of10Immigrants rest at a migrant shelter near the U.S.-Mexico border on Nov. 18 in Tijuana, Mexico. Parts of the migrant caravan have been arriving to Tijuana after traveling more than a month through Central America and Mexico to reach the U.S. border.Photo: John Moore, Getty Images

7of10U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Executive Associate Director of Enforcement And Removal Operations Matthew Albence testifies as the Senate Judiciary Committee holds a hearing on the Trump administration's policies on immigration enforcement and family reunification efforts, on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 31. Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, Associated Press

8of10U.S. Border Patrol agents question a group of immigrants near Anzalduas Park in McAllen on June 11, 2014. More than 68,500 mostly Central American children came here alone that year, many seeking their parents and fleeing gang violence and poverty, with the influx overwhelming the federal government.

9of10Central American asylum seekers wait as U.S. Border Patrol agents take them into custody on June 12 near McAllen. The sector is the busiest along the southern border, where Chief Manuel Padilla Jr. said they already receive "a caravan a week." In October, his agents apprehended more than 13,800 families.Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

10of10A 3-year-old boy stands under a full moon minutes after he and his mother turned themselves in to Hidalgo County constables after crossing the U.S. border at Anzalduas Park near McAllen on Nov. 15, 2016. The mother and boy fled from Honduras after local gangs threatened to harm him if she didn't give them information about her husband, who ran away when the gangs pressured him to join them. Photo: Michael Ciaglo, Staff

The boys fidgeted quietly on the courtroom bench, spotless in ties and matching button-up pastel shirts — donations, presumably, from the federal shelters in which many of them have been detained alone for weeks.

For some, this hearing on the ninth floor of a downtown Houston high rise would return them to the gang violence and poverty crippling El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Others would gain more time to plead their case and reunite with their families in the United States.

“You’re here in court today because the government of the United States claims you’re not a citizen,” Judge Chris Brisack said Tuesday. “You’re here in violation of the law.”

The teenagers stared blankly. They are part of a record 14,030 immigrant children in shelters across the country as of Nov. 15, including more than 5,600 in Texas, according to new federal and state statistics released to the Houston Chronicle this week. The number of detained children rose in one day to 14,056 as of Nov. 16, the San Francisco Chronicle reported last week.

In all it is almost three times the number of children in federal detention a year ago, and more than during the Central American child crisis in 2014 that marked the beginning of the exodus from the so-called Northern Triangle countries. Their arrivals have infuriated President Donald Trump, who is limited in what he can do to stop them from seeking asylum.

The government has had to scramble for more space to hold the children, including placing about 1,800 in a West Texas tent camp. A proposed shelter in downtown Houston is under litigation, with Southwest Key Programs, a Texas nonprofit housing many of the nation’s immigrant children under more than $400 million in federal contracts, accusing the city of wrongly blocking its efforts.

The number of detained minors began ballooning this summer after Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy separated parents from their children at the southern border. Usually detention facilities were seen as a temporary holding space for migrant children who came here alone. Typically most were quickly released to their families in the United States while they pursued their immigration cases.

Under a California judge’s orders, most of the separated families have now been reunited, and almost all of the children currently in shelters came here on their own.

That shelters are nearing capacity is not because significantly more migrant children are coming to the United States. In October, almost 5,000 unaccompanied minors were apprehended at the southern border, about in line with previous months.

More than 50,000 unaccompanied children came here in the fiscal year ending in September, higher than the approximately 41,400 children in 2017, which was largely seen as an anomaly after Trump took office and escalated harsh rhetoric on illegal immigration, including threatening to separate parents and children at the southern border -- as his administration later did.

The number of children coming here alone in 2018 was lower than 2016, when almost 59,700 children arrived, and significantly less than 2014, the height of the Central American child crisis. In that year, more than 68,500 children were apprehended at the southern border, including more than 10,500 that June. the highest on record.

By comparison, the number of children streaming across the border alone since October 2017 has averaged about 4,200 a month in the last fiscal year.

The historic high currently in shelters appears largely because children are being detained longer — an average of 75 days in August, compared to 59 days in June and 41 days in fiscal year 2017, according to information the Department of Health and Human Services provided to Congress.

The daily discharge rate plummeted to 1 percent as of Nov. 15, meaning far more children are being placed in shelters than released, said Mark Greenberg, who formerly oversaw Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families, the agency in charge of immigrant children.

“It is shocking and disturbing,” said Bob Carey, who previously headed the agency’s Office and Refugee Resettlement overseeing such immigrant shelters. “This is a crisis that was created by the decisions regarding their release.”

A two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker cries as her mother is searched and detained near the U.S.-Mexico border on June 12 in McAllen. The asylum seekers had rafted across the Rio Grande from Mexico and were detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents before being sent to a processing center for possible separation. Under the now-rescinded policy, parents were jailed and their children placed in federal shelters.

Photo: John Moore, Staff / Getty Images

Evelyn J. Stauffer, a spokeswoman for Health and Human Services, blamed the record number of detained children on a “broken immigration system that encourages them to make the hazardous journey.”

“The number of unaccompanied alien children apprehended are a symptom of the larger problem,” she said in a statement.

Advocates largely fault a new government requirement, implemented this summer, that requires all adults in a household seeking to care for an immigrant child to submit their fingerprints for a background check. That information is shared with the Department of Homeland Security and at least 41 so-called sponsors lacking legal status have been arrested, according to testimony Matthew Albence, acting deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, gave to Congress in September.

Previous administrations didn’t look into people’s immigration status when deciding whether to release children to them.

Government officials have said they must ensure the safety of migrant children. But parents and relatives are increasingly afraid to claim their children, leaving many to languish in government care, according to several nonprofit officials who work with such minors but declined to be identified because they are not authorized to speak on the matter.

“The kids are beginning to show different sets of problems because they are staying longer,” one official said. “It is a significant problem.”

Detained children often suffer from anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

This summer’s family separation crisis focused renewed scrutiny on the billion-dollar enterprise of detaining immigrant children. The network of more than 100 federal shelters across the nation operates with little public transparency, which officials maintain is necessary to protect the privacy and safety of vulnerable children. But it also makes it difficult to hold their caretakers accountable.

Attorneys who represent detained children are often restricted in discussing the cases by federal grants funding their counsel. The minors' court hearings are frequently closed to the public, so this week’s hearing in Houston was a rare peak into a tiny snapshot of their plight.

Brisack, an experienced immigration judge who has overseen children’s cases since 2014, efforted a mini crash course in immigration law — one of the most complicated areas of jurisprudence.

“The first part is whether or not you are removable,” he told the boys. The second part: “If there is anything to prevent you from being deported.”

Brisack counseled the children to avail themselves of opportunities in the shelters, where lawyers with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston have a government contract to provide basic representation. Once children are released, they must fund their own counsel in court and most are unable to do so.

“I suggest you take advantage of this as much as you can,” the judge said.

He dealt quickly with some procedural challenges that have become the norm in immigration courts across the nation. Two boys spoke predominantly Mam, an indigenous Guatemalan language, and the Justice Department had no such translators available.

Immigrant children play outside a former Job Corps site that houses them on June 18 in Homestead, Fla. Children are being detained in federal shelters for an average of 75 days, as of August, before being released to so-called adult sponsors, whom are usually relatives.

Photo: Wilfredo Lee, Associated Press

Brisack postponed their cases. Another three wanted to return home, seeking a legal option known as voluntary departure that would not penalize them if they ever returned. But the government objected to providing that to one of the boys, a Honduran teen who crossed into El Paso in June and was classified as an “arriving alien,” meaning he likely asked for asylum at the port of entry.

His claim appeared to have been denied and he has seemingly been detained in a shelter since.

But because of idiosyncrasies in immigration law, the child — who by all accounts sought help the way Trump’s administration has decreed — did not, as a result, qualify for a removal without penalties.

His Catholic Charities attorney declined to comment on his case.

But in the hearing, she asked the government for a legal option known as withdrawing his application for admission, so that the boy could return to Honduras without facing larger legal obstacles if he came back to the United States.

“I could give you some more time,” Brisack said. “But it would mean you would be in the shelter longer.”

No, the boy said.

If he returns after receiving a formal order of deportation, he could face a felony charge for re-entry and it would be much more challenging to come back legally or qualify for asylum — already a difficult endeavor for many Central Americans. The Trump administration has drastically limited how victims of domestic and gang violence qualify for asylum —a predominant source of persecution for those from these countries.

Some of the boys needed a bathroom break, forcing adolescent giggles.

Then it was on to the day’s final matter. A 14-year-old boy from El Salvador sought to return home, though his parents in Houston and grandparents in El Salvador wanted him to stay in the United States.

A child advocate said the boy’s grandparents had begged her to impress on the court the importance that he remain. Gang violence has made El Salvador one of the most dangerous in the world and teenage boys are often forced to join the groups.

The boy was resolute.

He said his grandparents had raised him since he was 1. He barely knew his parents and little brother in Houston. He has been detained for weeks.

“I made a mistake in coming here,” the child said.

A child who was separated from his mother at the border arrived for a court hearing on his immigration status in Houston on Aug. 14. The Trump administration is trying to circumvent restrictions on the detention of migrant children, attempting to end years of litigation involving the Flores settlement.

The judge asked how often he was able to contact his family: Two 10-minute telephone calls with his grandparents every week and one in-person visit with his parents.

“The law basically says a child is under the control of parent, so I have to be respectful of what the parents are saying,” the judge said. “I know you’re not pleased with that, I can tell.”

He gave the teenager until January before he would order him deported. In that time, it was up to the boy’s lawyer and family to convince him that he should remain in the shelter and pursue an uncertain future here.

The boy’s eyes welled up with tears.

Back to the shelter, for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

This story was updated to include numbers of children crossing alone since 2014, the height of the Central American child migrant crisis, and the even greater number of detained minors, as of Nov. 16, reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Lomi Kriel is the immigration reporter at the Houston Chronicle, where she was the first to uncover the Trump administration’s separation of migrant families at the border in November 2017 -- six months before the policy was officially announced.

She has written on all aspects of immigration, including the tightening of asylum and mass arrests of immigrants under Trump. She has reported on the record backlogged immigration courts, impact of the 2014 influx of Central American children that overwhelmed President Obama's administration, attacks on refugees, and increased militarization of the border. She frequently reports from the border, and has also reported on immigration from El Salvador, Arizona and Washington D.C.

Previously she was a reporter for Reuters in Central America and covered criminal justice for the San Antonio Express-News.

She holds a master of arts in political journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor of arts in English from the University of Texas at Austin, where she wrote for her college newspaper.

Born and raised in South Africa, she immigrated to Houston in 1998 and speaks Spanish and Afrikaans.